


Hollywierd

by Dillian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: "Donald Blake", 1940s AU, F/M, FrostIron - Freeform, Genderfluid Loki, Golden Age Hollywood, IronFrost - Freeform, Lady Loki, M/M, Old Hollywood - Freeform, Pepperony - Freeform, Thorki - Freeform, Thunderfrost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29558619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dillian/pseuds/Dillian
Summary: This story is set in Hollywood, in the 1940s:  How do eternals live among mortals?  At 1500 years old, Thor and Loki are just beginning to grapple with the question.  Thor is finding that his old live as a sportsman no longer has enough meaning to satisfy him.  Loki for his (and her) part, discovers there is more to life than accum8ulating money and power, and that  falling in love with a mortal isn't just possible, sometimes it's inevitable.  Please comment if you need more explanations about anything.  Sometimes I have the bad habit of assuming that because something is obvious to me, the author, that means it's going to be obvious to everybody else.  Now, on wiith the story.
Relationships: Loki/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Loki/Thor (Marvel), Loki/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 23
Kudos: 13





	1. Thor

**Author's Note:**

> Edward Carrigan: “All of a sudden, our – our altars are being burned down, and we’re being hunted down like common monsters.”  
> Madge Carrigan: “But did we say a peep? Oh ho ho, no, no, no, we did not. Two millennium. We kept a low profile; we got jobs, a mortgage. We... Wh-What was that word, dear?”  
> Edward: “We assimilated.”  
> Supernatural, s.3ep.8, “A Very Supernatural Christmas”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,  
> They have to take you in.”  
> \-- Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Thor, Loki, Skurge, Amora** **  
** **Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

Whenever he sees his brother, the same thing always happens. At first, everything’s perfect. Then Loki gets cranky, things start to change. Thor hasn’t been here three days yet, his selfish brother is already on him. “You’re not staying here forever,” Loki says. “I have a life here, don’t think I’m going to rearrange the whole thing just for you, just because _you_ made a problem for yourself. Go somewhere else,” he says, “make a new identity for yourself,” as if the Aesir can conceal themselves with illusion as he can.

Loki’s good fun, but he’s selfish. He always has been. The problem is, where else does Thor have to go? Father and Mother are safe in Asgard, but with new mortal technology now scanning the skies, Thor cannot use Mjolnir to travel there. Nor can he buy a ticket on a mortal airplane until their current war is over.

Loki was sympathetic when he first arrived. This is always how it goes. It was late on a rainy night, the weather reminiscent of what Thor had left behind after his plane was shot down over the South Pacific. He came to the house on foot, walking to Loki’s luxurious neighborhood, from the Greyhound station, two miles away. Skurge, his brother’s longtime servant, barely hid a smirk when allowing him in, but his brother was all concern, and almost affectionate.

“You look like a drowned rat Thor, poor you.” Soon his brother had him tucked cozily in a pink satin bed, and was plying him with hot rum and dainties. Loki sat on the other side of the bed. “Tell me all about it.”

It felt wrong, spilling the story. So much of its impact lay in the mortal lives he’d seen wasted, yet all too well does Thor know how mortals are viewed, by the Jotnar, as well as the Aesir. At the same time, it felt so good. At least before the accident, he’d been able to talk with his comrades when he’d return to the airbase after completing a mission. Quill, Gamora, Rocket, and the others: They were out there every day themselves, and like him they had lost friends and crew members. After his plane was shot down though he hadn’t been able to go back to them. Else how would he explain his lack of injury?

“Missing, presumed dead?” This was how Loki spoke three days ago. “And this was on one of those islands they talk about in the newspapers. How did you ever get back?”

He’d explained. Mjolnir. It was a risk, but he couldn’t stay in the South Pacific without being recognized.

Later, was when Loki started dinning at him about finding a new identity. “Have you been Donald Blake lately?” When he could have sworn he’d already shown him his dog tags. And, “How long since you’ve been Thor Odinson?” Along with nagging about allowing record of himself in mortal documents, As if his brother is any one to talk!

This morning dawns like the last two. Loki has made quite a life for himself here among the mortals. The sun rises, bright and golden, but behind a pink ruffled facemask, his brother sleeps on for several more hours. Thor for his part, has no desire to stir. Too many days he was pulled from his bed before dawn, only to witness death and devastation. He relaxes in the comfortable bed until Loki awakes, and rings the bell beside the bed, summoning Skurge, who brings coffee and pastries for them both. After that, they still do not move, but merely set the dishes to one side and enjoy a short romp.

How many years ago was it that they found out they were not related? It seems like he always knew it; Loki’s bone structure, his coloring, his powers, all so different from those of the Aesir. It seems like before his brain recognized it, Thor’s body already knew. An image, that always flashes in his mind when he asks this question: A mortal joust, they were attending for mere amusement only, but they had the chance to try combat for themselves. Both of them getting ready, naked, and his reaction when he saw Loki’s body. He couldn’t have been much more than 900, ahd he wouldn’t find out Loki’s parentage for hundreds more years, but he knew then, didn’t he? No one could feel that way, if their blood was shared.

This romp ended more abruptly than usual. “Why?” Thor asks. This is the first time his brother gets out of bed. “It’s still so early.” He looks at the clock on the bedside table. “Ten! Don’t tell me you have something to do at ten o'clock, my lazy brother?”

It’s not the words that do the job, nor yet the look on his face, although he can be very appealing when he wants to. Loki enjoys the time they share together as much as Thor does. In a trice, they’re warm under the covers together again, with Loki’s arms around Thor’s neck, and their mouths pressed together for more kissing. There follows an hour which will bring both of them happy memories for many years to come.

After that though, there goes Loki again, Thor tries a few appeals, “Why? You know you want to be here with me, you know you care about me, you know you like it.”

“I have an appointment.” Loki clothes himself as he speaks. The clothes of a mortal woman, as he has taken on a woman’s guise. Thor watches him dress himself from the skin out, undergarments to make his breasts more prominent and his waist smaller, nylon stockings and garters to hold them in place, a dress of dark-green wool, and a gold necklace and bracelets. Thor watches him apply makeup: foundation, powder, lipstick… He gets to the eyelash curler, and Thor cannot resist a comment.

“I thought you were in a hurry.”

“I am.” Loki’s face is twisted to apply mascara, and his voice comes out funny. “I’m already late.”

“Yet you don’t use your illusion powers. Why?”

“I don’t choose to. Do I ask questions about your life, brother?” Loki combs his long dark hair as he speaks, braiding it into a complicated crown around his face, then setting a green felt hat at an angle on top. He moves to the closet, returning with a long coat of some dark fur.

One more time, Thor tries. He cannot resist pushing the issue. “You could have clothed yourself entirely in illusion, and it would have bought us another hour. You would have enjoyed it.”

Loki cuts him off. “Don’t nag, Thunderer. Is it my fault you destroyed a perfectly good identity, going off and playing Army with the mortals...” 

_Playing Army_. This is how his brother sees it. Father would see it this way too, any of the eternals would. How do they all live like this, among the mortals, yet always holding themselves aloof from them> How can they? Mortals are more than companions, so many of them can be true friends. Thor has argued this many times with his brother though, and he has no desire this morning, to do it again. He watches his brother pull dark green gloves from the pocket of the fur coat and slip them on, then pick up a handbag from the dressing table, fastening the strap to his wrist. Not a word more would have passed his lips, were it not for the last thing he saw Loki do.

A beautiful woman is in front of him one moment, a beautiful woman, clad in his brother’s signature colors of dark-green and gold. Then with a shimmer, Loki’s appearance changes. There are wrinkles on his face, a few streaks of grey in his hair.

The cry comes without him willing it: “Loki, why?”

In a tantrum, his brother turns. “Thor, I don’t care what happened when you were among the mortals. I don’t care that you were a fool and allowed them to think you’d been killed. You’re bored? Isn’t that your fault, for pretending to be one of them? I’m late, I’m leaving. Why don’t you spend your day, trying to figure out a way of escaping from being ‘presumed dead?’”

A swirl of fragrance remains as Loki swept out of the room. Thor still does not stir from the bed. He relaxes, rings later on and has Skurge bring his lunch up to him. He should do as his brother said, and find a way out of his own predicament. That seems so difficult though, and besides, Loki will surely do that for him, once he’s in a better mood. Instead,Thor finds his mind going to his brother, and his strange pretense of being an old lady. Why?

The Son of Odin smiles as the realization came to him: A memory comes from the last time he visited his brother. Loki LeSueur, he was calling himself then, rather than Loki Laufeyson. Loki LeSueur, who was… An actress, wasn’t that it? A famous actress? What is the modern word? Oh yes, a _star_. That was only a few years ago, by the standards of the eternals, but mortals age quickly. Loki has his own predicament; his own identity is growing unusable. How funny, when he always pretends to hold himself so aloof from the mortals and their doings.

Thor grins. He picks up one of the sandwiches that Skurge has brought him, and takes a bite. Peanut butter, mixed with carrots of all things. The mortal war, and its rationing. He is no longer a soldier, and entitled to the best that America can provide. But surely he can do better than this? He rings again. This time his brother’s maid Amora answers the call.

The blonde is like she’s been ever since he can remember: Young, foolish, and pathetically infatuated with him. “Yes, Mr. Thor?” she coos.

“Bring beer,” he tells her. “Or if my brother has none, some of his run, with cold water alongside.” He watches the girl leave, her buttocks rounded and cute, beneath the black skirt of her uniform. She’s not Loki, but she is attractive, and always so grateful for the least bit of attention. If his brother keeps nagging, perhaps he should spend an hour or two with her. It would be a relief from his own thoughts, as well as from his brother’s hypocrisy.


	2. Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Out where they say,  
> ‘Let us be gay.’  
> I'm going Hollywood.  
> I'll ballyhoo  
> Greetings to you,  
> I'm going Hollywood.  
> While you sleepy heads are in the hay  
> I'll be dancing with a sun kissed baby.  
> I'm on my way,  
> Where's my beret?  
> I'm going Hollywood.”  
> \-- Bing Crosby, “Going Hollywood”

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Loki, Tony Stark** **  
****Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

The mortal world is a playground, something Thor used to understand, but now seems to have forgotten. Once they amused themselves together. Polo, that was Thor’s game back them, and auto racing after that. True son of Odin that he is, he’s chased the latest thrill ever since he saw that foolish mortal joust, so many years ago. The most recent of course, is flying machines… _Airplanes_ rather, that is the current term for them. Tiresome airplanes, which for some reason snared his brain so completely that he had to go off and fight alongside the mortals in their current war. The first Loki even heard of it was a photograph in the newspaper: “Local hero, Donald Blake, hard fighting in the Pacific.” The next thing of course, was Thor telling him he was “presumed dead.”

Surely a new sport will turn up soon, to waken Thor out of his funk. Flying saucers, say. Loki pictures her brother as Buck Rogers, and her lips twitch. She has just arrived at Chez Snob (traveling via Tesseract, since her tiresome brother kept her busy for so long at the house). Glancing at the watch on her wrist: She’s only a little late; just enough to make the kind of grand entrance a big star should have.

Loki is a big star. She was a star onscreen back in the silent days, when audiences appreciated an outsize personality. She moved on when their fickle tastes changed to prefer the boring “girl next door” type, and now has found an even better kind of stardom: _Money_. Film stars are workhorses, continually taking orders from everyone. Loki used to grovel before Von Doom back when she worked for Worldwide. Now since she’s put out that she wants to invest some of her millions of mortal dollars, every studio head in town is groveling to her, and competing to see which one can give her the nicest gifts.

There was a brief temptation to choose Worldwide. It was so _fun_ , watching arrogant Von Doom reduced to a supplicant, in the one meeting she allowed him. Mr. Stane of Stark International is so entertaining in his blatant hypocrisy though; he was always going to be the favored competitor. And then word came that Tony Stark was back in town. Howard Stark was the best-looking man in town, back in the heyday of Loki’s stardom in the 20s. A missed opportunity, he was, but his son is even more good-looking, if the newspaper photographs Loki has seen do him justice. It’s like having a second opportunity.

“A meeting with Tony?” Mr. Stane asks slimily. “Why of course dear lady, anything for you…”

Brief digression? “Anything for you” is a delicious phrase. It’s one Loki has heard offered only rarely to Odin, highest-ranked of all the eternals, and never to his beloved son, camped out now, forever, it feels like, in Loki’s bedroom. She can get it any time she wants. This is the power of money.

“...Anything for you Miss LeSueur,” Mr. Stane said, the subtext being of course, _if you pay enough_ , which is of course, understood by both of them. “I’ll set up a meeting,” he said. “Lunch? At your favorite restaurant? Naturally the studio is paying.”

_Naturally._

Entering the restaurant, with the usual entourage of unemployed actors/waiters pretending to be French, trailing behind her, Loki finds Tony Stark almost immediately. The newspaper photographs do not do him justice. There should be a law against anyone being that handsome, especially someone who leads the kind of life reports say he does. All the gossip magazines are always full of so many stories about Tony Stark the Playboy, Tony Stark who supposedly was going off to fight in the Air Corps, then he wasn’t going to fight, now he’s seen all over town with this starlet on his arm, or that one, or that one. Anyone as dissipated as he supposedly is shouldn’t look like that. Maybe he’s got a portrait in the attic, like in that Dorian Grey picture they’re supposedly casting over at Metro.

Mr. Stark turns as he hears her coming. The brilliance of sunlight through the window backlights him, and… By Odin’s beard, he’s even better-looking, full-on. Something flashes through Loki’s mind. Something, like a panorama of pictures: Stane, Von Doom, DeMille, Dore Schary over at Metro, all of them have been at her feet ever since she put it out that she wanted to be an investor, but there is always something missing. Something… A spark. Their eyes, back in the 20’s. No, it wasn’t perfect, but back then, shen she used to see the light of desire whenever a man looked at her.

Maybe Thor’s right? Maybe the time has come to refresh her own identity too? Although how would she explain all her millions then?

Loki’s illusion changes like she can’t help it, and she can see the matching change that goes across Mr. Tony Stark’s face.

“ _You’re_ Miss LeSueur?” A change in his voice too; he sounds strangled, like Mickey Rooney, playing Andy Hardy when he was about twelve.

“That’s what it says on my driver’s license,” Loki murmurs.

“A _pleasure_ , Miss LeSueur.” Unlike Mr. Stane, Stark sounds heartfelt when he says it… No, not _heart_ felt. There’s another part of his body in charge right now, it sounds like. It sounds _good_. Like the old days, when men used to fall at her feet.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stark.” She gives him her hand, and he holds it a little too tightly.

“A business meeting?” He’s regaining his composure fairly quickly; an intelligent man, this Mr. Tony Stark. Desire continues to light his eyes though. “Obie sent plenty of details, if you want to see them?”

“After a nice lunch, perhaps…” Perhaps after some more nice hours as well, doing who-knows-what together, at… Her place? By Odin’s beard, no! Thor is there!

If you want a microcosm of Loki’s relationship with her brother, here it is: It is not having him there to see when she brings a man home that is bothering her, but rather, that he would notice the change in her appearance. And he would gloat. He was twitting her about her elderly persona, just this morning. Cursed Thunderer. Too bad Loki’s powers do not extend to taking away someone’s voice.

It’ll be Mr. Stark’s house. She’ll get it. Wealthy and beautiful, if only for just these few hours, Loki will get all of it, and she will enjoy it.

“Lunch first, then maybe we’ll talk business.” Loki seats herself, removing her gloves with trained, elegant movements. “I want to know all about you, Mr. Stark.”

“And I want to know about you.” He cocks his head. Bor, the closer you get to him, the better looking he is! Those puppy-brown eyesT That kissable mouth! “Are you sure you aren’t Miss LeSueur’s daughter? Or is there a portrait in your attic I should know about?”

Loki trills laughter. “Silly boy.” Waving an imitation-French waiter over, she orders for both of them: All the most expensive things on the menu, oysters on the half-shell, roasted quail, Beef Wellington. After all, SI is paying. She returns to her conversation with the handsome Mr. Stark.

Later on a few lies will resolve everything. A “face lift.” That is the mortal term, isn’t it? And more generally, “plastic surgery?” “They can do wonders, those doctors,” she’ll say. Those doctors in… Switzerland? No, because of the mortal war. She’ll say Arizona instead.

Their wine has arrived, and Tony Stark is toasting her. “Beautiful hours, spent with a beautiful woman,” he says. “What could possibly be better than that?”


	3. Pepper, a Flashback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “JOE: ‘Write this down:  
> I'll give you some ground rules.  
> Plenty of conflict  
> But nice guys don't break the law.  
> Girl meets boy,  
> She gives herself completely  
> And though she loves him…’  
> JOE & BETTY: ‘She keeps one foot on the floor.’  
> BETTY: ‘No one dies except the best friend,  
> No one ever mentions communists,  
> No one takes a black friend to a restaurant.’  
> JOE: ‘Very good..  
> Nothing I can teach you..  
> We could have had fun  
> Fighting the studio.’  
> BETTY: ‘Yes, Mr. Gillis,  
> That's just what I want.’”  
> \-- “Girl Meets Boy,” Sunset Boulevard

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Pepper Potts, Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Harold “Happy” Hogan** **  
****Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

Before she met him, she swore she wasn’t going to fall in love with him. And there was no other reason except that that’s what all the other girls were did. She was terrible back then. The other girls used to say she was stuck-up. Well, they weren’t wrong, were they? Sometimes she’ll look back, and she can’t believe herself: Little Virginia Potts, she came to Hollywood and she thought she had it all figured out. All the other girls wanted to be discovered sitting at Schwab’s counter, like Lana Turner. They wanted to catch the eye of someone famous, Bruce Banner, Clark Gable, or Tony Stark. She wanted a nice stable career, someplace more exciting than Lafayette Indiana, she used to look at the other girls, and she’d think how silly they all were. Poor little Virginia Potts, who used to think she had the whole world all figured out. Not that it’s been such a bad life, not that Tony is such a bad husband. But lord, if she knew then, what she knows now!

Tony wasn’t around when she first arrived at Stark. It was Obie that hired her, Mr. Stane, she called him then. “Don’t expect a screen test,” he told her when she walked in the door.

“I don’t,” she said, and she thought that was that.

“Don’t fall in love with Tony Stark,” he also told her, and at the time she thought that was completely ridiculous.

This is what it is, to be a Midwestern girl from a good family: You walk around with all these unconscious snobberies. All the other girls in thee steno pool, with their platinum blonde hair, and their sleazy dresses. And their mangled English. “I seen ‘im,” one of them said while she was walking by, headed for Obie’s office.

“Seen who?” came a squawk from the adjoining desk, and it was like she could see Mother wince inside her head. “Mistah Stark?”

"Mistah Stark" was in Arizona at the time, she found out later. He was working on a microphone that could be used shooting on location. Of course none of the studios had any such thing back in those days. He was out of town, Happy and Rhodey were out of town with him. And all the girls in the steno pool had his picture on their desks, all of them were just waiting for him to get back, and it seemed like they didn’t talk about anything else except him.

And getting a screen test of course. “Aren’t there easier ways of getting a screen test than working as a stenographer?” This was what she told Obie, when she was being interviewed.

He made a wry face. “Miss Potts, you would be surprised.”

In the intervening years, Pepper has become friends… Not with those girls, most of them were gone within a year of when she arrived. She’s on friendly terms with most of the current girls in the steno pool. She’ll come in and there will always be voices calling out: “Hey Missus Stark, hiya Missus Stark, how’s Morgan?” and so on. Sometimes she’ll order a tray of sandwiches for them from the commissary, or bring in a boxful of cookies. And whenever one of them gets married, they can always count on “Missus Stark” for a nice gift.

Back then they hated her, and she never understood why. How could she not have seen that everything _they_ wanted kept falling into _her_ lap?

Tony was first. Only she didn’t notice it until a lot later. It was a rainy day in January the first time she saw him. January, 1933: A gloomy day, in a gloomy month, in what felt like a very gloomy year, with three months left to go before Roosevelt took office. Tony came in, and he’s always so happy when he’s working on a project. It was like a ray of sunlight had just come through the window and illuminated the whole office.

All the girls were just clamoring around him, the way they do. _Tacky_ , she was thinking, with fine, childish snobbery. At the same time… Did she admit to herself then, that she was jealous? Oh no, never, not ever… Honestly? Yes. Only at night, in the very middle of the night, when she would happen to wake up.

Pictures that would come into her head, or just the sound of his voice: “Myrtle…” He still gets that same caressing tone in his voice when he talks to them. And they still melt when he talks to them, just like they did back then. “...Myrtle, you're as beautiful as ever.” Or, “Peggy, I dreamed about you every night,” And he’d sing, improvising lyrics, “I found my million-dollar baby in a five-and-ten cent steno pool.”

He was in a good mood. The microphone project was going well. The studio still uses an improved version of that same microphone, along with others, most of them also developed by Tony. He was in a good mood, and he was going around flirting with everybody, and then he came to her.

“Something new!” He stopped dead and stared at her. How did she not recognize this as flirting too? “A firebrand,” he said that day, referring to her hair. “Who is this little moppet? Why, it’s Little Orphan Annie!”

Little Virginia Potts, awake in the middle of the night, thinking about the nicknames he used to call her before settling on “Pepper.” _Orphan Annie_ , she’d think, _Bricktop_ , _Carrots_ , like a ten-year old girl, somehow not realizing that when the boy pulls her pigtail at recess, it means he likes her.

She also somehow missed the significance when he shoved a script into her hand one day that April, and told her she _had_ to do the dialogue for Natasha Romanov in _Black Widow_.

“Me?” she said. “Why me?” Also, “I’m a Midwesterner, I talk like a Midwesterner,” which she didn’t, Mother the ex-English teacher having seen to that. “Who expects someone named Natasha Romanov to talk like a Midwesterner,” and she felt quite justified when Natasha was shooting her next picture, and the studio decided to use her real voice.

Of course by then she was married to Tony. It felt like that whole year was just a whirlwind. First she arrived at Stark, then Tony showed up. He was treating her like a little sister, “Here, drink this Ovaltine,” he’d say, “a girl needs her vitamins. Now, into the booth. Page 19, start reading again from, ‘Sovokia? When are we leaving?’”

In no time, it felt like, she was friends with all his associates. Bruce was talking to her about physics… While he lifted weights wearing nothing but a singlet! How could she not have realized how jealous this made the other stenographers? Not to mention half the boys at the studio! Rhodey was telling her about his Mama back in Philly. And showing her the racecar he and Tony had built together! “Red-and-gold,” he said, she remembers. “Tony paints them all red-and-gold.” And Happy, who was the one she expected to make a play for her. He would do little things for her, take her to the commissary at lunchtime, or see to it that she got flowers on Valentine’s Day. And then one day in April, to her complete surprise, Tony kissed her.

She was doing dialogue for a second picture at the time. Wanda Maximoff, in _The Scarlet Witch_. Wanda, who’s gone from Hollywood now, supposedly she’s very happy in the suburbs somewhere, with a husband and a family. And more power to her, you could tell she was always miserable in Hollywood.

Pepper was doing the dialogue. Alongside Bruce again, with Tony watching and giving direction. Obie came in.

“I’m sick of that Maximoff broad,” he grumbled.

“Can it.” Bruce. “We’re doing dialogue.”

Tony and Obie left the room to talk. Pepper got distracted, wondering about their conversation, and Bruce ended up shouting at her, before she was able to focus and they could complete the scene. 

Then later on when Tony came back in she could tell he was angry. He never gets angry at Obie, but that day he was. And he was talking to Bruce, not her. “She doesn’t want a career in pictures,” he said. “That’s what I told him, I said, ‘Where do you get off, treating her like she’s a piece of meat? Like she’s for sale?’”

Little Virginia Potts sas so naive back then that it verged on dumb. She didn’t realize who he was talking about until Bruce interrupted. “She’s right here, Tony,” he said.

And, in an unattractive squawk, she cried, “ _Me_?”

“Ask her,” Bruce told Tony. “Maybe she does want a film career.”

Like something out of a really bad screenplay, she squawked, “ _Me_?” again, and then, “A _film career_???”

Bruce laughed. Tony didn’t, which made an impression. “Look at her,” he said, “she’s unspoiled, not like the rest of them.” He turned to her then. “Alright Bruce, since you tell me to: Obie wants to give you a screen test Pepper,” he said. His lip curled and a light came into his eyes… _An exciting light,_ she remembers thinking. “He said he thinks you’ll have something, _with a little work._ ”

Her heart started hammering in her chest. Impossibly naive as she still was back then, she had no idea why. “A little…” Her voice was silly, breathless. “A little w-work?”

“He mentioned getting y9our teeth capped,” Tony said, “and losing some weight…” This was when he touched her. Just his hands on her arms at first, and his face closer to hers. “Ten pounds! ‘Are you blind?’ I asked him,. -- Pepper…” Somehow he was moving closer as he continued to talk, and her heart was hammering to beat the band inside her chest. “I don’t want to stand in your way Pepper,” Tony said. “If that’s what you want, you should go for it. Obie knows what he’s doing. If he says you’re star material, then you are, is that what you want o do?”

It couldn’t have been the first time someone had asked her what she wanted, but that’s how it felt to her. Someone was finally taking the time to care what _she_ felt like, and what _she_ wanted. And it was Tony Stark, and even though she didn’t admit it to herself, she had fallen for him just like every other girl at the studio. And she didn’t know what she wanted to say, and she felt almost too breathless to say anything at all. “I,” she whispered, “I don’t know what I want.”

Inside her, it felt like a voice was screaming, “You want him Virginia, you want him!”

That was when Tony kissed her for the first time. Not a real soul-kiss, just a light brush of his lips across her cheek. “Of course you don’t,” he murmured. “You’re just a kid…” She was 20. He, in his infinite wisdom, was barely five years older. But, “A kid,” he said, “you’re just a kid, Pepper. Don’t make any decisions right now, okay? Take some time, think about it.”

Of course it was just her luck, one of the girls from the steno pool had walked by and seen the kiss. By the next day the entire studio knew the whole story, and they all hated her. And she didn’t understand it at all! But why wouldn’t they? Everything the rest of them wanted was right there for her, all she would have had to do was reach her hands out and take it. She just had to decide.

Well of course, she chose Tony. And over the years, she hasn’t had too many regrets. He’s still in a really good mood when he’s working on something. Which is most of the time, or it was until he tried for the one thing he wasn’t able to get, when he wanted to enlist in the Air Corps a year ago. He’s been sulking since he was rejected, but he’ll get over that, he’s bound to. Something will turn up, something new and interesting that will distract him. Something technological, probably. Television, for instance, that could do it. This war won’t last forever, and once it’s over, television is just going to take off. And Tony will get hold of it, and he’ll make it better. It’s just a matter of him getting past his current funk.

For now, Obie’s been keeping him busy. He’s got him meeting some old-lady investor or another today, at a restaurant in Pasadena. “You don’t really want to do it, do you?” she said to him this morning before he left the house.

“Are you kidding?” He didn’t sound very interested. “It’s Loki LeSueur. She was my childhood heartthrob.”

“Perhaps so.” To tell the truth Pepper can’t remember Loki LeSueur at all. “How much money does she want to invest?”

“I don’t know.” Tony gave a shrug. Then, putting on a little of his normal manner, “The question is, how much can I get her to invest?” he said with a shadow of his old grin. “Thousands? Millions, maybe? I’ll get the old girl to give me every penny she’s got, and I’ll come home early to you. -- You going to be here this afternoon, Pep?”

“After Morgan’s dance lesson,” she told him. Morgan has ballet Mondays and Fridays until four.


	4. Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MASSEUR 1:  
> “I need three more weeks to get these thighs in shape.  
> No more carbohydrates, don't be naughty.”  
> MASSEUR 2:  
> “We'll soon have you skipping like an ingenue.  
> You won't look a day over forty.”  
> BEAUTICIAN 1:  
> “We have dry heat, we have steam,”  
> BEAUTICIAN 2:  
> “We have moisturizing cream.”  
> BEAUTICIAN 3:  
> “We had mud-packs, we have blood sacks,”  
> BEAUTICIAN 2:  
> “It's a rigorous regime.”  
> ALL:  
> “Not a wrinkle when you twinkle,  
> Or a wobble when you walk.”  
> BEAUTICIAN 3:  
> “Of course, there's bound to be a little suffering.”  
> ALL:  
> “Eternal youth is worth a little suffering”  
> \-- “Eternal Youth is Worth a Little Suffering,” Sunset Boulevard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a good friend who's been helping me with editing for this. She says this bir reads a little choppy. This is a problem I have sometimes wh33en I'm writing Tony. He and I both go off on tangents sometimes, and when I write him, I sometimes forget to sketch in the connections that are all in my head. There wasn't anything I could take out without hurting the story I'm trying to tell, so I left some of the choppy bits in. I hope you'll have the patience to read through those bits.

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Tony Stark, Loki Laufeyson** **  
** **Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

He knew he was going to sleep with her as soon as he saw her. She’s  _ that _ kind of old woman. Will she want him to sleep with her again? A lot of them do. He would have thought that she would. Only it was weird how things turned out. It’s a shame he doesn’t have somebody he can talk to. He can’t talk to Obie, he’d just say, “Well, it’s your studio too, Tony.” Obie always thinks everyone should do everything, if it’s for the good of the studio.

There are ways to have a happy marriage in Hollywood. Most of them involve not working for the film industry. If he were a janitor or a butcher… Hell, if they were both something low-level, if he’d been just a screenwriter, just an assistant cameraman or a grip, back when she was still taking dictation. If she’d fallen in love with someone who didn’t have an obligation to help keep the studio’s doors open, if every job on the lot didn’t depend on him and Obie. It was easier back when you could still get raw materials for things. It was easier before the war. He used to invent things, or he’d improve them. He did his share for Dad’s studio that way, back then.

There’s a station in Schenectady called WGRB. They broadcast television programs. How many people own a television set right now? Twelve maybe, or fourteen? Things cost 500 bucks, which is half of what the average guy makes in a year. Only that’ll change. It’ll be like Ford and the Model T. Let this war end, let the economy bounce back, prices are going to go down. There’ll be a rush for consumer goods like in the Roaring 20s, and one of the things people are going to be getting is television sets. Imagine if SI is ready to get in on that. On the ground floor, if they have the power to influence what commercial television looks like in America. Only how to start when you can’t get raw materials? When you can’t assemble a capable staff, because all the good men are in the Army? Someday all that’ll change sure, but what’s a guy supposed to do in the meantime?

What’s he doing? For now, he’s meeting with investors. Obie says it has to be done, and he's right for whatever that's worth. He's meeting with lots of investors. Even when they don’t want him to sleep with them, they always want something. A tour of the studio, Mrs. Gotrocks? Why sure, certainly, any time you want. And Daddy Warbucks wants somebody famous. Hey Pepper, can you set up something with Bruce Banner for next Thursday? If you flatter yourself you could say it’s like being an actor, but it isn’t. Even gigolo’s too nice of a word. This is like prostitution. He’s no different from the girls you see at Hollywood and Vine, when you drive by late at night. Maybe he’s helping the studio, but let’s not sugarcoat what’s happening.

Well, nobody ever promised a man a life of perfect happiness. Everyone makes sacrifices, why should he be exempt? And Loki is beautiful. When he heard he was meeting with a decayed star from the 20s, he wasn’t expecting her to be beautiful like this. It makes things easier. As for Pepper, she’s not a fool. She knows Tony has to do things sometimes, she knows he doesn’t want to do them, his heart always belongs to her...

That last part doesn’t ring true. It’s almost true, but not quite. Which makes it a lie. He didn’t go to the restaurant planning to sleep with Loki, but by the time they left together, they both wanted it. Things had changed. It’s hard to know who changed it., was it him, or was it her?

Loki came into the restaurant. At first all he was thinking was how vain she was. She has to be. You can’t have a body like that at her age, without focusing on yourself, because you have to work hard to get it. Not to mention the facelift she’d obviously had, and the dye she probably uses to keep her hair that color. This was at first, you understand. Cynical thoughts:  _ This old gal wants to look beautiful, she’s going to want me to do things to show I think she’s beautiful. And, what kind of things? Sex, obviously. That’s always what they want. _

Only then she was coming over to the table, and it was like Tony’s thoughts changed. It was like he got pulled in by the illusion. There was a term people used to use back in the 20’s. They’d say people had “it.” This was supposed to be a powerful magnetism, not just beauty, but something beyond beauty. People used to say that this actress or that one had “it.” Supposedly some actors had it too. Apparently Valentino was just crammed full of “it.” 

A corny term from a corny time, but nobody’s come up with a better one since then. Glamour means a girl has a certain kind of good looks, and va-va-va-voom just means she has sex appeal. Loki has “it.” She should be slinking around with a bandeau down over her eyes, sinning on tiger skins like Elinor Glyn. Maybe she had “it” when she was young, who knows, Tony can’t remember. She sure as hell has it now. Her “it” grabbed him, and pulled him in, and after that it was like he didn’t know what was happening.

A man shouldn’t make excuses for what he does. Tony’s married, and he cheated on his wife. He knew he was going to cheat on his wife as soon as Loki walked in the door. Those are the facts of the matter. But sometimes you need more than the facts to understand something. Why did he like doing it? This feels like it’s important. Helen Lawson was in town, looking to spend the profits from her latest hit, or so she said. Obie gave her to Tony too. “Do whatever you’ve got to do,” he said, “we need her money.” Tony “did” what he had to do for that man-hungry old broad, but he didn’t like it. When he was with Loki, he liked it.

They did it in his office at the studio, where the sofa he used to sleep in when he was in the middle of a project is now more like a casting couch, and he’s the starlet that lies down and gets fucked.

Ugly phrasing. It’s a sofa he always used when he had business, it’s just being used for a different kind of business now. At any rate though, that’s where they were when they did it, and he liked it, and so did Loki, you could tell. And afterward they lay together there for what felt like a really long time.

“You have to leave, don’t you?” She was lying against his chest when she said it. Her hair was silky against his shoulder, and her skin felt springy, and almost young. She raised her arm and looked at her watch. “It’s four. Will your wife be expecting you?”

He didn’t think about Pepper’s schedule, probably because he didn’t want to think about Pepper. “My wife knows the score,” is all he said.

Loki made a noise. “You’re too young to be so cynical.” She sat up, and she pulled at Tony until he was sitting up too. “Go to her,” she said. “Make her happy, like you made me. You made me very happy this afternoon, Tony.”

The lady understands what a good scene needs. She hasn’t lost her knack since she’s been out of pictures. Tony gave her what she wanted, he helped her pretend. “You’re the one that made me happy,” he said, and she laughed.

“You gallant boy!” She had her shoes in her hand then. She was putting them on, fastening the straps around her ankles. “I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said.

He gave her the old line from  _ Antony and Cleopatra _ , “Age cannot wither,” or something to that effect.

It was supposed to be all a game, but she looked serious. “No more flattery, Tony.” Her makeup was done, she was putting everything away. “You did a good job today. Tell your Mr. Stane my check will be in the mail.”

Weirdly, Tony started to feel serious too, with her acting like that. And he started feeling like he didn’t want their game to be over… Their “game,” which consisted of him servicing her. “I’ll see you again?” he said. The words were out before he knew he was going to say them. Fake words, they had to be fake.  _ Tony loves Pepper. _

Loki frowned. “We shouldn’t have seen each other this way at all.”

What was it? Could she really have been having second thoughts? Would be the first time a woman like that ever did. Old gals who are used to being the queen, and everybody bows down and kisses their feet, get used to taking what they want, and they don’t have second thoughts about it. But then most of them don’t leave a man wanting more, do they? Perhaps if they were all as good at fooling someone as Loki is, more of them would have developed a conscience.

Perhaps. Probably not. Retired stars are normally pretty selfish.

“I wanted to be with you today.” When Tony said it, it felt like he meant it.

Only Loki was still acting weird. “No you didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t want it either, for that matter. It just happened, and it isn’t going to happen again.”

That was when she left. Tony didn’t get up to see her out, he didn’t get up at all for a long time, who knows why? He just watched through the window. He saw her go out to the sidewalk, he saw a big Cadillac pull up, and she got into it. Just for a second there at the very end it seemed like she’d changed. Her hair didn’t look as dark as it had anymore, and there was something about her that suddenly seemed old. It was like one more bit of weirdness, capping off a very weird afternoon. Just illusion, like two liars getting together, both of them pretending so hard that they almost fool each other, and who knows where reality even begins?

_ Loki, _ he thought as he got up off the sofa finally,  _ were you this good at being an actress? _ She couldn’t have been though. Nobody’s that good.


	5. Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There's a change in the weather,  
> There's a change in the sea.  
> So from now on there'll be a change in me.  
> My walk will be different, my talk and my name.  
> Nothin' about me is going to be the same.  
> I'm goin' to change my way of livin',  
> If that ain't enough,  
> Then I'll change the way that I strut my stuff.  
> 'Cause nobody wants you when you're old and gray.  
> There'll be some changes made today,  
> There'll be some changes made”  
> \-- Sophie Tucker, “There’ll Be Some Changes Made”

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Loki Laufeyson, Thor Odinson** **  
****Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

“Siegmund?”

“No.”

“Siegfried then?”

His voice is sullen. “Wouldn’t work.”

“What about Jake Olson? It’s been awhile since you used that.” Does her own voice sound tired? It wouldn’t be surprising. Thor’s been very tiresome since he’s been here the past week. Identities stop working. It’s something all of them have to deal with, if they want to live among mortals. You don’t have to go whining about it to other people though. Has the Thunderer forgotten how to solve his problems by himself? “Sigurd Jarlson?” Loki suggests one more of the aliases Thor has used over the years.

Only to get another grumpy demurral. “Won’t do. Too German. There’s a war going on, in case you hadn’t noticed Loki?”

“I’d noticed.” Some of Loki’s investments have been doing especially well because of the mortals’ war. “ Jarlson is a Norwegian name,” she says. “Aren’t they allies?”

“I have no idea.” Grumpy Thor. “I don’t think most people here do either.”

“Good point. Mortals are ignorant. It’s why you fit in with them so well, Son of Odin.”

He looks at her with something like a pout. “You’re not very sympathetic.” 

“You think not?”

 _Sympathetic_ is what some people would say you were if you let somebody into your house in the middle of the night. And if you let them hang around for the better part of a week afterward whining, and diddling your servant girl. There’s a look Amora always gets in her eyes wheen the Thunderer is giving her attention. Loki’s learned to recognize it pretty well over the years. _Sympathetic_ is also what someone might call you if you have worries of your own, but you still manage to find any time at all for listening to them complain about theirs. Not that Thor would understand about that. He hardly even realizes that Loki can have worries, and of course his always seem more important to him.

Loki throws a quick glance at her adoptive brother, sprawled across her bed. A stubbled chin, and all those golden muscles, he should look completely out of place against the pink satin cushions, but trust him to fit in anywhere. He’ll probably stay here all day long if she lets him, but there are two stubborn people in this room. And Loki’s had a lot of experience out-stubborning her brother.

“You remember I mentioned I had an appointment?” She makes her tone very businesslike.

His is outraged. “Another one?”

_Yes Thunderer, because fascinating though it is to sit around all day listening to you grumble, some of us do have lives of our own._

Loki says gently, “I told you.”

“When?”

“Eleven.” Repeating herself. “Afterwards we’re having lunch. Signora e il Vagabondo, on Fairoaks.”

“I’ll be in disguise,” he says, like he’s forgotten a supposedly dead man can’t walk around town looking like himself.

“Yes. Because the alternative is sitting around here being bored all day. You’ll be adorable Thor, I’ll see to it.”

Mortal society is growing too complex for easy navigation. Even a hundred years ago, Thor used to stay with Odin and Frigga in Asgard when he was in between identities Of course a hundred years ago it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d gotten “killed” playing soldier. Mortals didn’t count their war casualties back then, nor did they publish photographs of them in their newspapers, so people would recognize if they saw someone who was supposed to be dead.

These days are different, and they have different challenges. _I told you if you had to play war, you should do it in Europe,_ Loki thinks of saying. That would have been easier. Both of them are fluent in the major European languages. He could have passed as a German and made his way to Asgard and concealed himself for awhile to let the mortals forget about “Donald Blake.” She’s said it a million times before; what would be the point of saying it again? Thor wanted the excitement of air battles in the Pacific. He’s constantly seeking out vehicles that will let him go faster, or perform more tricks. Like those silly racecars he amused himself with before the war came along. He should be grateful he’s got family here as well, willing to take him in. He should be even more grateful that this family member has power enough to cast illusion over him as well as herself, so that he can go out in public occasionally.

...He should be grateful enough to leave the room, if one has been hinting at it for the past ten minutes. This apparently though, is too much to ask.

“‘Adorable’ sounds ominous.” He’s lost his grumbly tone for now, which is at least something. It’s not enough by any means, but it’s a start.

“Oh, why would you ever think that?” Last time they went out Loki made her brother weigh 300 pounds, with a bald pate that shone in the sun. It was _hilarious_.

“What have you got in store this time?” He’s got the box of candy from her bedside table, and he opens it, ready to start cramming bonbons into his mouth. Which would also be hilarious, but she does have to prepare for her meeting. It’s more upsetting than usual, after her encounter with Tony Stark yesterday.

“Why not make me a girl?” Thor says through a mouthful of candy. “I think I’d be a pretty girl.” He throws his head around, light from the bedside lamp catching sparkles from his close-cropped blond hair.

He would be a pretty girl. Loki pictures him, blonde, tanned, buxom. The perfect starlet; girls like that used to show up by the thousands, every day when she was a star at Worldwide. They thought they were competition, but “Loki LeSueur” stood out because she was different. She didn’t need a bleach-job or a low-cut dress to show off her cleavage. All she had to do was look into the camera. That was 20 years ago. The world thinks she’s old now, and if Loki wants to hold onto the millions she’s made in this identity, she has to be old for them. The last thing she's going to do though is walk around in public with a Thor who has breasts and Veronica Lake blonde hair. What if Tony Stark saw them?

...That last thought: Where did it come from? And why should it matter? Stark is a mortal. There are a million mortals in the world. She could walk out any day probably, and find plenty who are as handsome as he is, and as susceptible to womanly charm. He was very susceptible, and…

Loki looks at her brother on the bed. He’s biting into a piece of candy, making a face, putting it right back into the box like a pig. “Coconut,” he grumbles.

“Can you leave?” she asks him.

“Fine. Since you ask so nicely.” Though his words are grumbly, Thor seems finally to have gotten it through his head that Loki wants privacy. He leaves, taking what’s left of the candy with him.He’s probably going to go find Amora in the kitchen. Which is just fine, better he has her than Tony Stark…

Loki came too close to being caught yesterday. Not that she hasn’t used her illusion powers before There have been weekends now and then, and a few longer getaways. Being Loki LeSueur, ex-star and wealthy Pasadena socialite can get so restrictive. But there was no excuse for letting the identity slip here in town. And at the studio where she plans to invest! What’s she going to do if she goes there today and Mr. Stane and Tony Stark are both there, each of them expecting a Loki who looks different?

Stupid carelessness to let Stark see her looking young and beautiful. Stupid greedy feeling she got inside her when she saw him. Stupid years of being a star. This is something the mortals have improved with all their new technology. In all her years on the stage Loki never commanded so much power before, as she did at the height of “Loki LeSueur’s” stardom. Even “Lettice Olson,” briefly favorite to Charles II, and to the future George IV as well, the second time Loki used her, was not so powerful. All she used to do in the 20s, was walk out her front door and people would be falling in front of her. But it was stupid to lay aside the old face she normally wears in public, just for a few admiring glances. And if she has to be in the same room with Tony and Mr. Stane today, it could prove her undoing. At the very least, she’ll be hard-pressed to explain it away.

 _Gaylord Hauser,_ Loki thinks as she rises from her dressing table. _Yogurt, brewer’s yeast, amino acids._ She’s rehearsing her excuses, better not to go into this meeting unprepared. _Jack LaLane, an hour’s calisthenics every morning. Oh, and that discrete clinic in Phoenix. -- They do wonders, don’t you think?_


	6. Pepper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If they asked me, I could write a book  
> About the way you walk and whisper and look.  
> I could write a preface on how we met  
> So the world would never forget.  
> And the simple secret of the plot  
> Is just to tell them that I love you a lot.  
> Then the world discovers as my book ends  
> How to make true lovers of friends.”  
> \-- Gene Kelly, “I Could Write a Book,” from Pal Joey

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark** **  
****Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

There are plenty of advice columnists saying that women should dedicate their lives to making their husbands happy. None of them have met Tony Stark, or they’d think twice about what they’re saying. A girl could go crazy, trying to make him happy. Sometimes it feels like he’s making himself miserable for some reason that he’s not willing to say out loud. Not that Pepper doesn’t want to see him happy, because of course she does. She’s made sure to fill her life with enough other interests as well though, so that when he’s depressed, he doesn’t drag her down with him. Which is why it comes as a surprise to her when she realizes that Tony’s not acting depressed for a change.

He’s almost acting happy. He comes home a little earlier than usual, 4:30, instead of 5:00. Morgan’s still outside playing in the pool. Jarvis is probably fixing her lamb chop and spinach, before he starts cooking dinner for the adults. Pepper’s upstairs getting dressed. She’s got the blue hostess pajamas she knows he likes, spread out on the bed, and she’s fixing her face.

“Evening, honey.” He’s humming a tune as he comes in, which should have been the tip-off. “How was your day?” he asks, brushing a kiss across her newly powdered cheek.

“Are you trying to ruin my makeup, Tony?”

“You don’t need makeup, I like you without makeup.” She’s trying to replace the powder, not to mention fixing her lipstick and eyeshadow, but every time she gets a brush close to her face, Tony swats it away. “You’re beautiful just like that. Would you put makeup on the Mona Lisa?”

Tony and his Mona Lisa. “Will you stop, please?”

Finally he subsides, she puts the rest of her makeup on. “How was your day?” she asks. “It had to have been good for you to be in a mood like this.”

“Oh, it wasn’t bad.” He opens the closet, humming again. “I got a hundred grand for the studio. You remember, I told you about Loki LeSueur?”

“She came through? The old silent star?” With her makeup fixed, Pepper undoes her robe, ready to get dressed.

“I guess it depends what you mean by ‘old.’” Tony’s voice comes from inside the closet, as he pulls out his dinner suit. “She still looks pretty good anyway.” Leaning out, he throws a grin Pepper’s way. “She doesn’t have a Tony Stark in her life to make her old before her time.”

Who could resist Tony when he’s in a mood like this? It’s always his way: He’ll go around moping for so long you get depressed just watching him, and then suddenly like the sun coming out from behind clouds, he’s cheerful and happy again. The only thing to do is go along with it, because the depression will be back again before you know it. “Now she does.” Pepper matches Tony’s quip with one of her own. “You watch. She’ll get old before your eyes.”

“Like time-lapse photography.” Tony’s changed his shirt. He holds his white tie out for her. “Will you tie this for me?”

“At your age!” Naturally she’s by his side tying it even while she’s talking. “Don’t you think you should learn to get dressed by yourself?”

“In a rational world we’d all go around in metal suits like robots,” he says. “Easy to clean, heated maybe, just like our houses.” With his tie done, Tony slips into his dinner jacket. He hands Pepper her hostess pajamas. “Put these on in front of me,” he says. “I want to watch.”

“Tony, you’re terrible.” At the same time as she’s saying it, Pepper is pleasantly aware that her brassiere and step-ins are fairly new, and just back from the cleaners. And fortunately she hasn’t developed any middle-aged spread yet. She slides her robe off her shoulders, earning a wolfish whistle from her husband.

“What did you say you did all day?” he murmurs. “Burlesque lessons from Gypsy Rose Lee, that was it, wasn’t it?”

“A club meeting.” The deep blue of the satin pajama outfit does things for her; Pepper would have to be a fool not to know that. And the v-neckline gives her cleavage, which is nice for a change. She slips on the trousers.

“What, hiding those legs?” From Tony, sitting on the bed and watching her.

“ _Tony._ ” With the trousers fastened, she clasps the diamante belt around her waist, finishing the outfit. “Yes,” she finishes her thought from earlier. “I had a club meeting, fairly boring to you I’m sure.”

“Raising funds for the charity ball?” Tony’s hand reaches out and touches her buttocks, and Pepper swats it away.

“Looking for volunteers.” There’s his hand again. This time she turns to face him. “If we go down now, we can keep Morgan company while she eats.”

“Hmm, let me see.” He puts his hands out, weighing alternatives. “I could watch a five-year old eat spinach, or… How long until dinner?”

They don’t eat until seven. How long has it been since she and her husband were intimate in the afternoon like this? How long since Tony has wanted to be?

“Don’t muss my hair.” Pepper’s undoing the clasp on her belt as she drops onto the bed next to him. “Or my makeup,” while he’s already sliding her pajama jacket open and kissing her throat.

“I’ll muss whatever I want.” He’s got the jacket completely open now, and she feels it slide down her shoulders. “You look more beautiful when you’re mussed. -- Kiss me, Pepper.”

She kisses him. "You really are in a good mood tonight, Tony.”

“Am I?” While he’s undoing the bra-hook between her breasts. “I suppose a man can be happy to see his wife?”

A man “can“ be happy about anything, but Tony hasn’t been happy at all in almost a year now. If he’d been meeting a beautiful woman today, Pepper might have some ideas about what had made him like this, but Tony’s slept with more than a few decayed celebrities since Obie put him to work raising money for the studio. If anything, they just leave him feeling more depressed.

“So you’re happy to see me?” Pepper does her best Mae West as she undoes his pants and slips her hand inside. “I guess this isn’t a gun after all then, mmm.”

“I guess it’s not,” he returns, sliding his pants the rest of the way off,. “My little chickadee.”

“For W.C. Fields, that sounds remarkably like Ed Wynn.”

“No it doesn’t,” he says from on top of her, also something to the effect of how she wouldn’t know a good impressionist if one bit her on the bottom. He comes fairly close to biting her on the bottom himself before they’re finished. When he’s in a good mood, there aren’t a lot of limitations to what Tony will do.

They’re both disheveled when they finally come downstairs, right as Morgan is finishing up her supper. Jarvis has her sitting at the table with a napkin under her chin. Naturally when she sees Tony she’s out of her chair immediately, jumping into his arms and shrieking, “Daddy!”

“What did you do today, Princess?” He sits in her chair, taking their daughter onto his knee.

“I played.” She’s slipping her hands into his pockets, even though it’s been months since Tony’s been in a good enough mood to bring her something when he came home.

Sure enough, there are no presents to be found, but she does find something. Her hand comes out holding a folded piece of paper. 

“What’s this, Daddy?”

“That, baby?” He unfolds it, holding so Pepper sees a check with a lot of zeroes written in feminine handwriting. “That’s money? Lots of money.”

“Good. Will you buy me something?”

Tony tucks the check away again. In his wallet this time. “What do you want?”

“A pony. An airplane.”

“I’ll buy you both of those.” He kisses her on top of her head. “If Mommy lets me.”

“Mommy” has been through this before. “ _Jarvis_ won’t let him,” she tells her little girl, and her husband, who is sometimes almost like a little boy himself. “Ask him.”

The butler is standing in the doorway. Morgan looks at him. “ _Jarvis_ never lets Daddy do anything fun.”

 _Jarvis_ lets Mommy and Daddy push all their difficult decisions off on him, which might not be fun, but it sure is useful. “Perhaps your father could bring you a doll,” he suggests, which meets with approval from Morgan.

“That would be good. Daddy, will you?”

“Of course.” He sets her on the floor. “Now kiss Mommy and me goodnight, it’s time for your bath.”

They get their smacks on the cheek, and watch the little girl toddle upstairs ahead of Jarvis. Pepper slips her hand into her husband’s, and they watch her leave together.

“I forgot I hadn’t given Obie that check yet.” This isn’t usual for Tony, who doesn’t like having to coax money out of investors, and usually hands it off as soon as he gets it.

“I’m surprised he didn’t grab it out of your hands,” is all Pepper says out loud though. “He probably wanted to.”

“He was distracted, I think.” Tony sounds calm and cheerful, so different from how he has been sounding lately. “Loki said she’s going to give us more besides that.”

“You must have made a good impression.” Does it sound like Pepper’s asking if her husband slept with Loki? She’s not. What would be the point? If Loki wanted Tony to sleep with her, he did it, there’s no doubt of that. He does things like that, and he’s always ashamed of himself for it, but he does it anyway. Like he doesn’t understand his best contribution to the studio comes from creating things, not from shaming himself to earn a few dollars.

She isn’t trying to make any implications right now though, or to do anything that might ruin Tony’s rare good humor. And fortunately he understands that. “I made a great impression,” he says. “I flattered her and gave her everything she wanted.”

“Everything?” Words that aren’t meant to imply something can come out sounding like they were. Pepper hasn’t finished saying that one before she wishes she hadn’t. “Shall we have a martini before dinner?” she asks to change the subject.

“Of course.” Tony doesn’t want to pursue that subject any more than she does. He stirs gin with ice just long enough to chill their drinks, then pours his own before adding a drop of vermouth and an olive to hers. When they both have their glasses, he raises his to hers in a toast. “You’ve put up with a lot from me over the years, Pepper.”

“It was an investment.” She touches their glasses together, before taking a drink. “I always knew you were worth it.”

“We’re so introspective tonight.” Tony’s voice is much more tender than it’s been in a very long time. “Thank you for putting up with me, my beautiful, practical Pepper.”

He kisses her. She kisses him back. Neither of them notice as Jarvis comes back downstairs after putting Morgan to bed, and goes into the kitchen to finish dinner.


	7. Thor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sound the happy hunting horn,  
> There’s new game on the trail now;  
> We’re hunting for quail now,  
> Happy little hunting horn.  
> Play the horn but don’t play corn.  
> The music must be nice now,  
> We’re hunting for mice now,  
> Happy little hunting horn.  
> Danger’s easy to endure when  
> You’re out to catch a beaut;  
> Lie in ambush, but be sure when  
> You see the whites of their eyes-don’t shoot!  
> Play the horn from night to morn.  
> Just play, no matter what time,  
> Play, ‘There’ll be a hot time!’  
> Happy little hunt-ing horn.”  
> \--Gene Kelly, “Happy Hunting Horn,” from Pal Joey

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Thor Odinson, Loki Laufeyson, Happy Hogan, Tony Stark** **  
****Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

Yesterday Loki came back, in the old woman’s guise he’s been using since Thor arrived here. He seemed in a good mood. This morning he is again cheerful and animated.

“You can’t stay here forever.” Loki is for once, not in woman’s form today. Rather, it is as a young man that he appears to his brother. It must have been almost 100 years ago that Thor last saw him in this form, that time when Sif convinced the brothers to join her adventuring in the California gold fields.

“I had not intended to.” Thor is in the middle of breakfast. A pile of toast, eggs scrambled, golden and fluffy, coffee, weak, the way mortals drink it here in America. He looks up, and is unable to resist a smile as he sees Loki’s youthful form in the doorway. “Ikol?”

This Loki called himself the last time Thor saw him in this form. He was Ikol Serrure when he helped Thor and Sif find and stake their claim by the American River. Then when he grew bored, after only a few days and well before the gold strike which had sent them home gloating to Asgard, he was Madame Loki, and bragged of how much money he was making in San Francisco.

Today he’s casually dressed, a sport jacket, an open-collared shirt, unironed trousers. He leans in the doorway. Relaxed, as his brother watches, he removes a pack of cigarettes from a pocket, shakes one out and lights it. Then, through a cloud of smoke, “I believe we overestimate mortal perspicacity, Thunderer.” 

When Loki is in a good mood, he has ideas. Generally lots of ideas that come very quickly, and are not fully explained. Thor does not feel like a fool normally, but when his brother gets like this he always does, and he always finds himself reduced to merely echoing what Loki says. “Overestimate?”

“Don’t be boring.” Next to his brother now, Loki takes a slice of toast from his plate and crunches into it. “You were a hero of sorts I suppose, in the mortal war.”

Loki, as always, refers to the war dismissively. For someone so proud of not being Asgardian, he has all of Asgard’s prejudices.

“I suppose.” The true heroes were those who went to battle knowing they risked their lives, but there’s no way Thor can explain that to his brother. “As a race driver,” Thor says, moving to surer territory. “I won the Grand Prix in 1937. I’m famous.”

“Yes, I’m sure. _Famous_.” Loki’s voice is dismissive. He gestures at a pair of golden statues on the mantel. “Well, I suppose some people must know your face,” he continues, “and would expect to see it in certain contexts."

“Contexts?” When they were young Thor used to set Mjolnir on his brother’s chest and force the ideas out of him. As he’s grown older though, he’s begun to see that as unfair. After all, Loki does not have to share his ideas, and they are good ideas. Is it so terrible if he has to show off a little in presenting them? “What are you thinking, brother?”

An hour later, two young men venture forth from the house in Pasadena. “The Purloined Letter.” Loki references a mystery story. Thor, who enjoys mystery stories, read it when it was new. That was a long time ago. “Hiding things in plain sight,” Loki continues, when Thor doesn’t respond. “As in you, my brother.”

As if he didn’t notice that Loki has given him no guise of illusion today. “There will be no need,” he said before they left. “You watch: We’ll walk the streets, looking just as we do now, you’ll attract no attention at all. It’s just a matter of putting you someplace where no one would look for ‘Donald Blake’.” 

A streetcar takes them into Hollywood. After a week of being sheltered, escaping the house only for brief visits to the expensive restaurants his brother enjoys, the activity in the streets is stimulating. Thor’s whole body feels newly awake. He looks around. Women are everywhere, and more men than you would expect.

“You could work in a shoe store.” Loki’s cheerful voice. They’re passing a store named Kinney’s Shoes as he says it. “Or why not be a shoemaker? Do they have shoemakers anymore? Do you know, brother?”

There’s a jewelry store on the other side of the street. “Or why not be a jeweler? -- No, I suppose that wouldn’t work. It takes too much intelligence.”

After a thousand years of being called stupid by his brother, Thor barely hears the insult. “I don’t want to work in a store,” he says simply.

“Hmm, difficult.”

Thor sees a drugstore up ahead. He heads toward it. An ice-cold Coca Cola would taste good. Or a Pepsi perhaps. You get twice as much for your money with Pepsi.

Loki trots to catch up, following him into the store. “A druggist? Something with less intelligence? A soda jerk?”

The long marble counter of the soda fountain is thronged with customers, as seems to be the way at any hour these days in America. As in the streets, women outnumber men significantly.

“Look at all those pretty girls.” Loki’s voice in Thor’s ear. “This is the perfect place for you, making sodas, making love, putting tomatoes on sandwiches, and dating tomatoes when you get off work at night.”

 _Tomatoes_ : Mortal slang for beautiful women. Loki always assumes that Thor wants nothing out of life besides sport and sexual adventure. Which was, sadly, the case when Thor was younger, before he’d spent time among mortals and really learned to know them. Still, it will do him no good to stay cooped up in his brother’s house forever, and he must find some way to live on his own again. He looks toward the marble counter.

“Black cow and an egg sandwich?” A young man in an apron is pouring drinks, slapping together sandwiches so fast you can barely see his hands move.” He deals out plates and glasses to the customers, some of whom are as Loki said, very pretty.

Thor tosses a glance his brother’s way. “I might do this for awhile.”

“Pfft, for a wolf like you? It’ll the role of a lifetime. Look at all those long-stemmed American beauties.” Loki gestures at a row of attractive girls sitting at the counter. “This is Schwabs. All the prettiest girls in town come here. Because they want to be discovered.”

There’s a shimmer, and Loki changes form. He does this sometimes, though it makes no sense. As though either of them wants the mortals to notice how different they are from them. Thor looks fixedly at a display of Bromo Seltzer boxes and tries to pretend that the young man standing beside him hasn’t just turned into a woman with long blonde hair. “Watch.” Loki tosses the Veronica Lake hair he didn’t have a moment ago. “That boy will give me free food, you’ll see… Wait.” He gives Thor a look.

His own identity is going to be transformed too, Loki’s in just the mood to do it. Thor wonders if they’re going to be two beautiful women, competing to see who can draw more attention, or if he’ll be the homely friend, relegated to applauding the other's conquests. Loki’s done it both ways in the past. “Make me pretty,” Thor says, not expecting his brother to pay any attention to his words.

“I’ll do what I want.” Loki stops. His gaze has strayed to the door.

“Who is that?” The man who’s entered is vaguely familiar. Heavyset, brunet, his suit a little formal, for his working man’s face. Someone Thor saw at the racetrack in Fontana? Who was it he worked for?

“Doesn’t matter,” Loki says, while Thor’s still chasing the memory. “It’s not him I’m interested in.” His form shimmers again, not to the young man Ikol, but to his usual old lady form. “If the chauffeur’s here, Stark’s here too. I wonder why he didn’t come in.”

Happy’s his mane, Thor remembers. His boss, Tony, was a hobbyist, rich enough to afford cars that were far beyond his driving ability. “You’re interested in a racecar driver? Maybe he didn’t come, maybe he just sent Happy to get something for him.”

“Maybe.” Loki fumbles in a purse that wasn’t on his arm a few minutes ago. He -- _She_. -- pulls bills out of a purse and stuffs them into Thor’s hand. “Enjoy the rest of the day, brother. I’m sure no one will recognize you. If they do, just tell them they’re mistaken. Tell them it’s your doppelganger. -- William Wilson,” he says, referencing another mystery story. He leaves Thor, following Happy out of the store.

Probably Loki is right, and he won’t be recognized. Mortals see what they expect to see, Loki’s right about that. If he is recognized, Thor will return to his brother’s house, not having the Trickster’s facility for lying convincingly. He considers getting a sandwich before he leaves the store. Or a hamburger steak with grilled onions. It’s been too long since he’s had one of those.

But there’s an air of desperation to this drug store that doesn’t feel right to him. Maybe all these women who are so desperate to be discovered by someone from the movie industry just remind him too much of how badly he wants not to be discovered. Thor shoves the money his brother gave him into his pocket and leaves the store.

Outside, he sees Loki, again in the guise of a woman about their mother’s age, talking to a man leaning against an Oldsmobile. Is it Happy’s boss Tony, that he saw once in awhile at the racetrack? Hard to tell, and Loki would probably try to kill him if Thor went close enough to know. He shrugs, and continues down the street. A hamburger steak first, and a couple of Pepsis to wash it down with. After that maybe he’ll find a record store and spin some platters. Have the Andrews sisters made anything new lately, Thor wonders? Then a pang goes through him as he remembers Peter Quill, and the hours he’d spend in their Quonset hut, playing Andrews sisters records on his battery-operated record player.


	8. Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Gayer than laughter are you,  
> Sweeter than music are you.  
> Sunlight and moon beans,  
> Heaven and earth,  
> Are yours to give me.  
> And when your youth and joy  
> Invade my soul,  
> And fill my heart  
> As now they do, then  
> Younger than springtime am I,  
> Gayer than laughter am I.  
> Sunlight and moon beans,  
> Heaven and earth  
> Am I with you.”  
> \-- William Tabbert, “Younger Than Springtime,” South Pacific

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm fudging a little, with the carob trees. I think in Los Angeles, it would more likely be jacarandas. Everywhere else I've ;lived in California though, the carob blossoms are such a part of early spring, and they mean a lot to me, the way they come out so early and tell me that Spring is coming, and they way they really, REALLY don't smell good AT ALL. That's why they're in there: They mean Spring to me.

**[Fandom: MCU -- 1940s Hollywood AU** ****  
**Characters: Loki Laufeyson, Tony Stark** **  
** **Author’s note: This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.]**

Afterward, Loki thinks it was all because of the weather. Beautiful, treacherous, early springtime weather. Spring comes so early in Los Angeles, one day you’re sheltering from rain that would drench you if you dared step outside, then a breeze comes up and blows the clouds away, you look up and the sun looks back at you, smiling like a friend. She stepped out of the drugstore, a playful breeze already pulling at her hat. There was the odor of carob blossoms in the air, those first, early blossoms, that promise spring, though their smell is not fragrant. Her skirt fluttered against her legs, and her coat flapped open.

The Oldsmobile was double-parked, visible between a cab, and some kid’s jalopy. Tony was in the back seat, Loki could see him through the window, open to welcome Spring’s early warmth. His head was bent like he was reading something. Industry news in the  _ L.A. Times _ ? Not on a day like this, she thought. It was a day for fun. Sure enough as she came closer, she could see the funny pages, lying on his lap. Maggie and Jiggs, Nancy and Sluggo, Li’l Abner, with his innocent good looks, Daisy Mae always ready to catch him at an unguarded moment and drag him to the preacher feller, for a shotgun wedding.

Days like this are like a fever in your veins. Adulthood falls away, you’re a child again, reckless and foolish. Loki flashes on a memory:: When she was young, she was not boy, not girl, but both and neither, at the same time. Loki was just Loki, that was all she and he needed to be. One time hoping for once to gain an advantage over Thor, in their endless quarrels, Loki took the form of a snake. Foolishly, the Thunderer picked up the snake, and Loki, seizing the opportunity, thrust a little dagger into his shoulder. How Mama and Papa laughed!

“But that’s not how we should use magic,” Mama chided.

“Now, now Frigga, the child will learn,” said Papa Odin. “Let Loki have his fun, he’ll be responsible when he is older.”

How old does one have to be, before responsibility comes naturally? How long before one stops making foolish mistakes that jeopardize everything one has built for the past 30 years?

There was that naughty little breeze. It blew the little clouds across the sky, and it felt like it was blowing Loki toward Tony. And the sunshine smiled down, warming her shoulders through her mink, which was suddenly much too warm for the day. First risk of the afternoon: The mink disappeared. So did the sensible green tailleur she was wearing under it. Loki wore a frock she’d seen in March’s  _ Vogue _ , just a few days earlier. Her wrrap was a light Spring fur, and her hat was straw, with flowers.

Risk enough right there, but in her childish mood, Loki went further Out there in public on the street, her grey hair darkened, the wrinkles she normally wore faded away. Were people starting to look? She didn’t notice. She put one hand into the open window.

“Fancy meeting you again so soon, Mr. Stark.”

He looked up… Maybe people were looking then, maybe some of them were saying, “Is that Miss LeSueur? That’s Loki LeSueur!” Odin’s eight-legged stallion Sleipnir could have ridden right past her shoulder, with Geri and Freki baying alongside, and Loki wouldn’t have noticed. What she saw was the light of pleasure that came into Tony Stark’s eyes.

“Does it feel soon to you?” he said. “I’d say it’s not soon enough.”

“Silver-tongued devil.” Just a few words from a mortal should not have set her heart to beating like that, so it felt it was in her throat. And yet they did. Loki gave a laugh. “There should be more men like you in the world, Stark, to make old women like me feel young.”

“Old?” He spoke musingly. “You seem as young as springtime to me.”

Nothing in his words, nothing in a mortal at all, that should stir the heart of an eternal, yet Loki could feel her heart thundering, almost as if she would faint. As if in a dream, she saw the car door opening. Tony stepped out onto the curb.

More childishness: Loki, who had been wearing high-heeled pumps, was wearing flats by the time Stark stood next to her. Now she looked up at him. Is there any better way to look into a handsome man’s face?

He looked down at her, and his face was dreamy, happy. “We have to stop meeting like this, Miss LeSueur.”

“How would you rather we meet, Mr. Stark?” It had been so long since she’d had a chance to flirt with a man! “I can think of some ways.”

And he looked at her. “I’ll bet you can.”

Stark is married. Loki wasn’t thinking about that yesterday. She wasn’t thinking about where they could go together. To his office? Back to that couch, where he’s probably bedded innumerable chorus girls? Or to his house, there to profane his wife’s bed? She wasn’t thinking about her own pink bedroom. Pink, because the color supposedly makes old women look younger. Not that it worked so well when she once brought Von Doom there… She wasn’t thinking about Von Doom either, or about her brother, who could well walk in and surprise them if she did bring Stark back to her room. Nothing was in her mind except the look in his eyes, and the feeling it gave her. Such a fresh, happy feeling, the very essence of springtime.

“We’ll grab a drink,” he said. “We can talk.”

“Do you want to talk to me then?” Nothing more surprising than this desperate-sounding question, from her, to a mortal.

“I don’t know. Why wouldn’t I?”

Why indeed? No reason, every reason. Von Doom said she was beautiful, but the caveat was there in his eyes:  _ For a woman of your age _ , he meant. And that was ten years ago, and Loki didn’t change her appearance for him, as she’s been doing ever since she met Stark. “Loki LeSueur” was supposed to be almost 40 then, stupid mortal men think that’s old. “The camera adds ten years,” she used to hear them say, while they chased after young girls still in their teens. Before the train of thought could make her angry, Loki pushed it away. Since she was being so foolish, she was going to enjoy it.

“No reason that I can think of.” She put her hand on Stark’s arm. “Where shall we go, Mr. Stark?”

He wanted to take her someplace ritzy. She could see it in his eyes. She saw the surprise also, when she suggested the small cafe just down the street. Someplace where “Loki LeSueur” wasn’t likely to be recognized of course, she was taking too many risks already, walking around in public while she looked so young. But she couldn’t say that to him of course.

“Just a simple retreat,” she said instead. “We can get Cokes and talk.”

She caught sight of the Thunderer at the counter in the first restaurant they passed, and kept going. The last thing she needed was her blabbermouth brother, noticing what she’d done to her appearance, and commenting on it. The second one was acceptable. They went in.

An hour, sitting by a dingy window, in a commonplace little restaurant, favored by working people. Clatter of dishes from the kitchen, voices of cab drivers, factory workers, shopgirls, taking a quick meal during their break from work. Odors of overboiled coffee, onions on the grill, the faint stink of old drains. How can you make an idyll out of these trivial mortal details? And yet they did.

“I don’t get you,” he said. “You’re not like people said you were.”

“What did they say I was like?”

“I don’t know?” He shrugged, gave her a grin. “Like a vampire, that’s how my mom would have put it.”

“Yes,” thoughtfully. “I remember the word.”

“You’re not though,” he said. “You’re… I don’t know.”

Poetry, in his mortal words. “You’re ageless,” he told her, “changeless. You make a man want to find out more about you. Could you cut it out, Loki? I’m married, you know.” And she heard the sweet words, she heard that he wanted to spend more time with her. Most of all, she heard her name, beautiful, on his lips.

“If I wanted you…” She stopped. She doesn’t want him, not him nor any mortal.

_ Don’t waste your time on mortals, _ Odin used to say. T _ hey’re little, temporary beings. -- Not like us. _ Who should she spend her time with instead though? He never answered that, moreover it used to feel that he considered her his inferior too, as she was a giant. Perhaps, as one inferior, she belongs with this other inferior, Tony?

It was a feeling. It passed. Odin was right, no good comes of associating with mortals. Loki will have to give up her LeSueur identity soon. She’ll choose another. Perhaps she’ll be Ikol; it might be nice to be a man again. Or perhaps she’ll be a blonde for a change. Gentlemen as the saying goes, do prefer blondes. Stark will be the one who’s old then. Already there are wrinkles between his brows, the first faint signs of mortal decay.

There’s an unexpected pang, thinking about how soon Stark is probably going to die. What does he have left? Four decades? Five at the most? That this should cause any sadness at all to an eternal is proof of Loki’s foolishness yesterday. Truly, Odin was right. Leave mortals to each other; eternals should be with other eternals. The new morning is grey and overcast, though no rain is falling yet. Serious weather, appropriate for behaving responsibly. Loki rings for Skurge.

“Set out my black Schiaparelli with the gold buttons,” she says. “And tell my brother I’m awake. You can bring up breakfast for both of us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said with proper deference.

Eternals should be with eternals. As appropriate now as it was a thousand years ago. A part of Loki’s mind wants to remember that the Aesir consider giants their inferiors too, as well as mortals. She doesn’t allow that though.  _ Eternals should be with eternals. _


End file.
